Journalist with No Medical Training
Solves Mystery of Enterocolitis!

JOURNALIST WITH NO MEDICAL
TRAINING SOLVES THE MYSTERY OF AUTISTIC ENTEROCOLITIS FOURTEEN YEARS
AFTER CHILDREN ARE DIAGNOSED; BRIAN DEER DISPOSES OF INFLAMMATORY
BOWEL DISEASE, REGRESSIVE AUTISM AND ALL SIGNS OF VACCINE DAMAGE,
JUST LIKE THAT!*

* Warning, this post contains satire.

THE JOURNALIST WHO WORKED MIRACLES

Tuesday and Wednesday of last week saw two days of the GMC Hearing
during which evidence in mitigation was given on behalf of Professor
Murch and Professor Walker-Smith. In January, after a two and a half
year trial, the GMC Panel found Dr Wakefield and his colleagues
guilty on almost every count of carrying out unethical research on
autistic children and the prosecution recommended that Dr Wakefield
and Professor Walker-Smith were 'erased' from the Medical Register
while Professor Murch suffered a lesser sentence of suspension.
Following the verdict, the Lancet case review paper of 1998 was
expunged from the history of the journal. For the drug companies,
however, the erasure of Dr Wakefield and his work is not enough,
they have as well to obliterate any whiff of vaccine damage
associated with MMR. Now the battle is intensifying to deny the
clinical work and results of any findings by the Royal Free
Hospital's Experimental Gastroenterology Unit in the mid 1990s.

Today the BMJ issued on line (1) a long article by Brian Deer, a
reporter for the Sunday Times, the chief executive of which, James
Murdoch, is on the board of the vaccine producing pharmaceutical
corporation GSK (2). Although Deer's article appears to be an
academic piece of writing resplendent with many references and end
notes, it is basically a piece of regurgitated hackery, a more or
less exact replication of an article for which Deer was taken to the
Press Complaints Commission in 2009 (3). (See the BMJ article and
Dr. Wakefield's response at AoA's post:
Brian Deer in BMJ and Dr. Andrew Wakefield's Response .)

Deer, as he admits in the article, has a six-year history of
supporting the MMR vaccine and character-assassinating Dr Wakefield
and other expert witnesses who have given evidence and carried out
research on behalf of parents claiming that their children were
vaccine damaged.

Deer was the journalist who presented himself to Rosemary Kessick -
the first parent to take her child to the Royal Free Hospital -
using a false name. Deer was the journalist who in the mid 1990s
mercilessly satirized Dr John Wilson, the expert witness acting for
parents who claimed against Wellcome's whooping cough vaccine in the
1980s. Deer is the journalist who claimed that none of the children
cited in Wilson's case review paper were actually ill or they were
ill from quite other causes (4). Deer is the journalist who wrote
scathingly about Margaret Best, the only parent to win a vaccine
damage case in Britain's court - had she told the complete truth?
Deer asked (5). Deer is the journalist who wrote his 'scoop' that
character-assassinated Dr Wakefield (6) with help from Medico-Legal
Investigations, a private investigation agency wholly owned by the
Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries. Deer is the
journalist who prevailed upon Dr Wakefield, Professor Murch and
Professor Walker-Smith to write long explanations of their clinical
work and 'research' at the Royal Free Hospital and then gave the
statement to the GMC prosecutors to use in evidence against the
three doctors. Deer is the journalist who became the only person in
the world to complain formally to a regulatory body about Dr
Wakefield, when he offered his 'investigation' to the GMC. Deer is
the journalist who has caused considerable consternation amongst
some parents of vaccine-damaged children who believe that he has had
access to their children's confidential medical case notes. But
perhaps most important of all, Deer is the journalist without a
smidgen of medical training who has continued to claim that the
children cited in the Lancet case review paper were not suffering
from Inflammatory Bowel Disease - were not in fact ill. Just as he
vanished the children in Dr John Wilson's case review paper, he has
attempted the same trick with the children cited in the Lancet
paper, authored by thirteen highly qualified doctors and researchers
(7).

Deer's argument that the children in the Lancet paper were autistic
but not actually ill, is a hypothesis that fits perfectly into the
UK government's concord with the pharmaceutical industry and the NHS
proposition, and that of the vaccine industry, that no vaccines can
possibly cause adverse reactions. In fact, Deer is just one of the
adherents to the new medical authoritarianism in the UK which allows
pharmaceutical companies to kill and maim thousands without ever
having to face the consequences. Legal aid, the funding system that
has allowed claimants access to the British judicial system, has now
all but collapsed and the courts are disallowing any claims against
pharmaceutical companies.

Inevitably, one asks why has the BMJ published such an article by
Deer at this time? Further perhaps, why is the BMJ, the house
journal of Britain's hard working doctors, taking Deer seriously?
Part of the answer to these questions, clearly lies in the state of
play in the GMC Hearing. The prosecution, when they erase Dr
Wakefield from the medical register in June or July, will need all
the supporting arguments they can lay their hands on - Deer's 'idée
fixe' that Wakefield is a crook who fixed research results is
perfect non-evidence in their support. But beneath this bizarre
discourse lies another more basic one liner - Public Health Policy.

I sat through every day of the GMC trial of Dr Wakefield, Professor
Murch and Professor Walker-Smith. I remember clearly that day in the
hearing when Smith, the senior prosecutor, pounded Wakefield
relentlessly in cross-examination about the histology of the Lancet
12 cases. Her theme was the one, central to her case, that the
children were not ill, but had been made to look ill by Wakefield
for the sake of the case against the pharmaceutical companies. The
case that she was worrying like a mangy terrier with a struggling
rabbit was a case where the initial clinical tests and the biopsy
had left the doctors in doubt over whether or not the child in
question had Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Some cases were borderline,
some were just developing, some showed confusing signs.

The discussion took place in the histology seminar, where quite a
large group of concerned clinicians and researchers looked at biopsy
samples and tried to draw clear pictures of the cases. The argument
over this particular child went backwards and forwards, until, when
the meeting had finished, Dr Wakefield had concluded that in was
better to be diagnostically on the safe side. After all the whole
point of clinically reviewing these children's cases, was not for
any research purposes but to establish a diagnostic protocol to aid
the treatment of the children. It was better to be safe than sorry,
Wakefield thought, and taking all the other factors involved in the
child's presentation, he decided that the case should fall within
the IBD schema. Neither Smith nor Deer have ever shown the slightest
degree of understanding of the way doctors or hospitals work when
presented with undiagnosed illnesses. This utter and despicable
ignorance was evident throughout Smith's prosecution and Deer's
writing - it can be difficult to divine honesty in propaganda.

It was the general case propagated by both Deer and Smith, perfect
bedmates, that the Lancet children were not ill, just autistic, that
they had no Bowel Disease just the occasion bout of toddler
diahrroea. Surprising really when neither of these faux medics or
their expert witnesses had observed any of the children cited in the
Lancet paper and the only vaccine-damaged children that entered the
hearing were quickly thrown out when it was said they disrupted the
proceedings.

Regardless of this, on a Sunday following Smith's cross examination
about the histology samples, Deer followed up in the Murdoch owned
Sunday Times with his fantastic story that Dr Wakefield had 'fixed'
the results of his research. One of the main problems with this
line, was that there wasn't any 'research', as in 'research study',
all that was happening was that the whole RFH team were reviewing
all the test results and clinical examinations of 12 children; 12
children who had attended consecutively at the Royal Free Hospital,
presenting with a whole series of closely observed signs and
symptoms that indicated bowel disorders and in most cases regressive
autism. The sole reason the cases of these children were being
reviewed was so that doctors at the Royal Free and any other
hospital coming across similar cases could be slightly closer to a
treatment. At the GMC hearing in 2009 Richard Horton, editor of the
Lancet and one of the main prosecution witnesses, made the case that
the peer-reviewed Lancet paper was an excellent piece of science,
one of the best case review papers he had seen.

Deer's mercenary hackery in the Sunday Times turned the heads of a
good many people who had previously stood staunchly at Wakefield's
side sneering at Deer. These lite-believers now gobbled up Deer's
strap line 'MMR doctor fixed results' and used it as a means of
salving their consciences. It was a good get-out, a piece of Philip
Marlowe that gave a perfect rational to the GMC miscarriage. 'Hey,
the guy fixed the results of the study, he's just another tip of the
iceberg docs, taking money for fixing trial results, no wonder
they've come down heavy on him. Big Pharma is doing its best to stop
this shit'. Now Deer had explained it to them in pulp fiction, they
could join cold hands with Smith and help fix the hash of this
maverick.

* * *

Despite the findings on lack of fact, announced in January by the
GMC Panel, chaired by a GSK shareholder, despite the constant
air-headed support of the media for the GMC case, the last knot
hasn't yet tied tight and the case still confused many people. Like
the two young white working class guys I heard talking at a bus stop
when I left the hearing one rainy afternoon.

'OK' ,said the first guy, slight and wet, with a tattoo on his
neck, 'We can believe that the guy was doing unethical research on
autistic kids - like it must happen all the time. But these kids
were taken to the hospital by their parents ... Why would parents
claim that their kids were sick and like explosively shitting all
over the house, if they weren't?

The second guy, in a nylon fur-lined parka, looked at the damp
pavement for a while: 'Well, they say', he wiped the raindrops off
his nose, 'Smith tells it like this ... these parents, like had
autistic kids and they couldn't cope with it, weighed too heavy on
their mind like, so they start draggin' them round the hospitals
till they get some doctor who'll say, "no it's not your fault your
kid's autistic, this condition been caused by some environmental
trigger, like a vaccine."'

There was a spark in the first guy's eyes as he looked at his
friend. 'Ok, I'm with you, like this prosecutor is saying it's the
parents and this Wakefield guy in this together, like rubbing each
others backs. But say, man why would they do that?'

'Way I heard it from a lawyer friend of my brother, man'.

He assumed the air of someone in the know pushing his wet hair off
his brow. 'It's like this, Smith's got a good answer to that, she
says they both going up against the Man and Big Pharma to make a
million'.

His friend pulled his parka around him and shook off the rain like a
dog. 'I guess this is all just too complex for me bro. I just hope
they get the guy who done it. Imagine all those sick children man, a
couple of thousand of them at least!'

Martin J Walker is an investigative writer who has written several
books about aspects of the medical industrial complex. He started
focusing on conflict of interest, intervention by pharmaceutical
companies in government and patient groups in 1993. Over the last
three years he has been a campaign writer for the parents of MMR
vaccine damaged children covering every day of the now two year
hearing of the General Medical Council that is trying Dr Wakefield
and two other doctors. His GMC accounts can be found at
www.cryshame.com, and his own
website is,
www.slingshotpublications.com. He is the publisher of Silenced
Witnesses, Volumes I and II in which the parents of the GMC children
speak out. Both books are available for purchase at the Slingshot
site.